YouNow, a live broadcasting service allowing users to their own live video content or interact with the video streams of other users in real time, was the first live video mobile app to gain traction in the US with over 40 million users. Yonatan Sela, Chief Business Officer at YouNow, said it was their goal to combine video and blockchain – two of his greatest passions.

The founders at YouNow noticed a high level of engagement with users from the start, most spending 45 mins a day or more on the platform. This amount of user action naturally turned into a vast stage for a developing digital economy thus prompting them to launch the first two-sided virtual goods economy. Here users purchase digital goods, using digital non-crypto currency and content creators can earn on the other side. This became the first place where video, gaming and micro transactions for creators enabled massive audience participation.

Once blockchain came around, the key point people at YouNow saw the opportunity to take it to the next level. They were already running a large community of content creators and users who were doing business in a digital economy with a digital currency that they had created. With blockchain technology, they were able to create PROPS – a decentralized ecosystem for digital video, with the goal to open up the network for developers to enjoy a shared video library and to have shared data.

Additionally, they wanted to replace the game place token with a crypto token, which meant it could be taken across a variety of apps and be controlled by the PROPS network; more of a public utility network for digital media rather than a propriety, tax collecting models, which is the way most digital medias are run today.